


Carrion

by reus123



Category: Town of Salem (Video Game)
Genre: Animal Death, Descriptions of Hanging, F/M, Gen, M/M, questionable revival mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:07:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27210199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reus123/pseuds/reus123
Summary: A story about all the people that the vigilante has ever loved.
Relationships: Mafioso/Vigilante (Town of Salem), Vigilante/Witch (Town of Salem)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Carrion

The closest that you'll ever come to love is the shadow of a memory that lingers in your head, of a warm voice and soft hands, a name that you've already forgotten. Picture frames line the walls of your house, the family home that was never for you. There's a muted sort of anger buried deep inside and it eats at you, this wish that they gave you more than a life and a half-hearted attempt at true affection. Sometimes you wonder why you were born at all, if they never wanted you. Sometimes, you wish that they never tried to care. It would be easier that way, for you to forget.

They met in lazy July, where the sun scorched the tarmac and reflected blindingly from the windows lining the suburbs, the son of a banker and the daughter of a lawyer, their lives wrought by middle class discontentment. 

Born to two people who loved the intrigue more than they ever loved each other, who wanted the perfect life without all the hindrances, waiting for a child to complete the missing link.

You have your father's eyes and your mother's smile and everybody knows you by your last name. In offices and on the street you can see them following you in shop windows, their faces reflected back at your from every surface. The son of a banker and a lawyer and a failure of a child, the only burnout in a family of prodigies. Your picture hangs on the mantle, the new centerpiece in their family home, framed in gold and gilt. Your mother wrote the inscription, back when her hands were steady and her mind was clearer. My shooting star, it says, may you light up the night.

You will carry this shame until the world ends.

\--

The closest that you'll ever come to love is lying next to a girl with hair the colour of wheat stalks, her hand and yours a few inches apart. The lampshade paints the shadows of constellations across the ceiling, scattering light that glows violet in her eyes as she laughs and talks, about life, about the past, the future, everything but the present, the two people that you and her were and never will be again. 

She faces the world with all its cruelty and she pushes back, creating light and life with her bare hands. She shows you everything that she is, and everything that she came from, her brother, her mother and father, and the little cat she calls Clementine. There's so much that reminds you of her, the rushing streams sing in her voice and the tips of leaves glitter the golden hue of her hair.

She tells you that she loves you, one day in the springtime when you still remember her face. She offers you wildflowers the colour of her eyes and you want to tell her, so badly, how much you need her, how much she means to you. Instead you nod and laugh, and you watch her disappear into the distance a few days later when you leave for the very last time.

You dream of her, she wears an engagement ring and a wide smile and you think that this is what happiness must feel like, this emptiness in your chest that swallows you whole.

She sends you her well-wishes, parcels of pressed flowers and carved wood, filling your home with reminders of what once was. You want to ask her if she's happy, if she really loves him. You wonder if she still remembers you, if her memories are haunted the way yours are with the people that you could have been, in another life and in a kinder world.

You forget her entirely, one morning when she takes your hand and pulls you from the earth, brushing the dew from your face with her sleeve. She cradles the broken fragments of your body and gives you another chance, another life, without her. 

(Some nights you still dream about her, and she looks at you with hollowed eyes and her hands dripping blood and when she touches your face it burns like fire. You've never felt anything so beautiful as this.)

\--

The closest that you'll ever come to love is meeting a boy with nicotine stained fingernails and a smoker's cough, a sardonic smile on a face that was never built for happiness. There's nothing but practicality in the way he leans in and runs his fingers through your hair, pressing a kiss to your forehead or your cheek or your lips in the same stilted manner. You like to think that he loves you when he slips his hand into your own, cold flesh and brittle bones. 

A few years and a lifetime ago, you remember watching the crows outside your window, their rusty voices calling you awake. You remember seeing dead birds along the roadside, their small bodies twisted and broken. There would be nothing left in the evening except bleached bones picked dry and the distant flutter of oil slick wings, reflecting the winter sun.

You grip his hand a bit tighter, willing him to stay with you. Everything leaves and everything changes and he will be no exception, but you wish it could be different. 

He leaves marks on the world so that it won't forget him, bright paint on the canvases in his room, fresh blood spattered across his clothes. He uses a horsehair brush and a thin butcher's knife, the blade polished and ready. The paintings will hang in his room long after he's gone, a part of him that will live forever.

The noose is waiting outside and you can already imagine the harsh rope lines crossing his neck, the flesh burned red and purple after the coroner cuts him down. They will dig a grave for him, deep enough to keep the crows away, shallow enough that his bones will resurface a year or so later, a warning from another generation.

It's been a week since he was buried, and still his family cluster at the graveside, the blackmailer's black skirt fluttering in the wind, the consigliere's sharp gaze fixed onto the mound of earth that was once a person, that breathed and lived so long ago. 

A photograph gusts along with the breeze, flipping over and over, the glossy surface cracked with age. You reach out and hold it, for a moment.

He looks so alive, his eyes bright, his smile wide and honest, and you finally understand what there is to mourn. They must miss him, this boy who wanted the entire world and everything in between, who died one winter morning and came back changed. They see him at his best, when he was still living. 

But he's always been half dead to you.

(They will ask you in the years to come why you didn't fire the killing shot. You grin and say, well, I didn't want to waste a bullet, but the crows outside watch you with their bright eyes and they know, they've always known. You sit with them in the mornings when the dew glitters gold and silver, listening to their voices. You think about his hollow bones and the tar black suit he always wore, smelling of blood and death even after his skin had been scrubbed raw. You think about his cold hands and his cold eyes. You miss him more than you could ever understand.)

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of a standalone piece, the very first part is some backstory, the 2nd ties in with Clementine, the 3rd had context but it's been deleted.


End file.
